Gaelic Games: Through much of the 1990s Clare would motivate themselves for games against Tipperary by remembering the perceived slights of a day in 1993 when they adjudged Nicky English to have enjoyed the infliction of pain a little too much.

Well, for the next decade or so memories of yesterday against Waterford should stay fresh in the Banner memory. Waterford didn't just beat Clare, they annihilated them. They didn't just score 3-21, they did so while proceeding as a flotilla of showboats. This was a slice and dice job. In the end, Clare were wiped from the table in small, desiccated pieces.

Ken McGrath gave an exhibition, disdaining the use of hand on sliotar for practically the whole of the second half as he controlled with one touch and pulled with the next. Eoin Kelly ran repeatedly at the Clare defence, knocking points over off the stick and then making little gestures of affection to the crowd. John Mullane buzzed and dived like a fighter plane and tugged at the chest of his jersey every time he did something right. The crowd loved it. Long before the end Waterford were toying with the Clare the way a sated cat toys with a live mouse.

It was that bad and that surprising for Clare. Waterford, who had to be checked for a collective pulse after the league final just eight days ago, came out and simply exploded.

Mullane scored a point after 20 seconds and pumped the crowd up as very few players can. Dave Bennett and Eoin Kelly followed, killing Clare softly with their frees, and then, after 14 minutes, Dan Shanahan had a goal from the edge of the square and it was virtually all over.

All over except the scoring. Waterford scored points that they will dream about in years to come. Shanahan helped himself to a hat-trick, prowling around the small square while the others distracted Brian Lohan. With the exception of Eoin McGrath, every Waterford player from eight to 15 scored. Eoin Kelly, a controversial figure within the county, scored eight from midfield, four of them from play and each of that four a beauty.

Clare were troubled everywhere. The young guys didn't shine. The old guys looked creaky. Ollie Baker came off early. Jamesie O'Connor came on, lasted just five minutes and had to leave again. Clare used all their substitutes but in the end there were so many leaks they had no choice but to submit.

"It's like a death in the family, to be honest," said Anthony Daly, the Clare manager, afterwards. "It's very hard to talk about."

Probably he meant just the events of yesterday afternoon, but somewhere in his great heart he must have known that the disaster was on a bigger scale.

Having soldiered with Clare through thin years, he became a totem of the boom time from the mid-'90s on.

Making him manager was about the only concrete thing the Clare County Board did, however, to continue the winning tradition. There has been no follow on generation of stars inspired by 1995 and 1997. There has been a slow decline towards ordinariness, and yesterday (unless something truly remarkable happens over the next five weeks) probably marked the expiry date for the last of the great team.

Yesterday, Clare got cleaned out in places they've never been cleaned out in before. They had to watch Waterford dance.

"I know we're better than that," said Davy Fitzgerald. "I just know we're better than that. That was so disappointing. We didn't perform. We didn't get off the blocks. There was nothing you could do. Ball after ball coming in. I know we're not that bad. I know we're not even related to being that bad.

"We let down the supporters and we let down Anthony Daly. We have five weeks. We deserve what will be said about us now, but we have five weeks to put it right."

Five weeks to put an end to the requiems and obituaries and the retirement talk.

Waterford have less time to quieten the hollering. Not long after the dressing-rooms emptied at Semple Stadium yesterday there was the clacking of studs on concrete and the smack of sliotar on ash: Tipperary exploded from the tunnel for a training session. They will have enjoyed watching Waterford take their ease.

Waterford will have an uneasy feeling, common at this time of year. Last weekend, after the league final, Anthony Daly got his team together for a training session and told them not to mind the flaccid Waterford performance they had all seen that afternoon, told them that Waterford would come to championship bristling. No good.

Now Justin McCarthy has to gather Waterford together on Wednesday and tell them to ignore the wave of excitement which will be sweeping the county. Tell them to go back to their clubs for the next round of domestic championship games and remember what they have won so far. Nothing.

"Justin already told us that in the dressing-room," said Shanahan. "He said we've won nothing. We'll go back training during the week. We'll chat about what happened today. We'll make sure we won't get carried away."

And so they headed back southwards, the most frustratingly enigmatic side in hurling. Can they keep all the excitement suppressed for a another few weeks, or will they be washed away by a great geyser of hype? Watch this space.